The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
Minus ten degrees.
A blue atmosphere tinges
the distant pine woods.
February 11, 2023
Sunday it snowed about a foot deep, — our second, only, important snow this winter, — and now the brook is not only frozen over, but almost completely concealed under drifts, and that reminiscence or prophecy of spring is also buried up. February 11, 1853
It will indicate what steady cold weather we have had to say that the lodging snow of January 13th, though it did not lodge remarkably, has not yet completely melted off the sturdy trunks of large trees. February 11, 1856
The river channel is now suddenly and generally frozen over for the first time. February 11, 1858
If in the summer you cast a twig into the stream it instantly moved along with the current, and nothing remained as it was. Now I see yonder a long row of black twigs standing erect in mid-channel where two months ago a fisherman set them and fastened his lines to them. They stand there motionless as guide-posts while snow and ice are piled up about them. February 11, 1859
Nature works by contraries. That which in summer was most fluid and unresting is now most solid and motionless. February 11, 1859
The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen, but I see none burst. They are very tightly filled and smooth, apparently stretched. February 11, 1858
Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°. February 11, 1855
At 8 P. M. it is 11° and windy. I think it is the coldest day of this winter. February 11, 1858
2 P. M., 20°. February 11, 1860
The atmosphere is very blue, tingeing the distant pine woods. February 11, 1855
I thought it would be a thawing day by the sound, the peculiar sound, of cock-crowing in the morning. February 11, 1856
Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°. February 11, 1855
At 8 P. M. it is 11° and windy. I think it is the coldest day of this winter. February 11, 1858
2 P. M., 20°. February 11, 1860
The atmosphere is very blue, tingeing the distant pine woods. February 11, 1855
I thought it would be a thawing day by the sound, the peculiar sound, of cock-crowing in the morning. February 11, 1856
Snow-fleas lie in black patches on the ice which froze last night. When I breathe on them I find them all alive and ready to skip. Also the water, when I break the ice, arouses them. February 11, 1854
The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard. February 11, 1855
The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard. February 11, 1855
See a partridge by the riverside, opposite Fair Haven Hill, which at first I mistake for the top of a fence-post above the snow, amid some alders . . . Within three rods, I see it to be indeed a partridge, to my surprise. February 11, 1856
The south side of Ball’s Hill, which is warm and half bare, is tracked up with partridges, and I start several there. February 11, 1859
So is it next Sunday with the Hill shore, east of Fair Haven Pond. These birds are sure to be found now on such slopes, where only the ground and dry leaves are exposed. February 11, 1859
I found another caterpillar on the ice . . . a different species from that of January 8th. February 11, 1857
It was frozen quite stiffly . . . and I did not dare to bend it hard for fear of breaking it, even after I took it out in the house. But being placed on the mantelpiece it soon became relaxed, and in fifteen minutes began to crawl. February 11, 1857
The south side of Ball’s Hill, which is warm and half bare, is tracked up with partridges, and I start several there. February 11, 1859
So is it next Sunday with the Hill shore, east of Fair Haven Pond. These birds are sure to be found now on such slopes, where only the ground and dry leaves are exposed. February 11, 1859
I found another caterpillar on the ice . . . a different species from that of January 8th. February 11, 1857
It was frozen quite stiffly . . . and I did not dare to bend it hard for fear of breaking it, even after I took it out in the house. But being placed on the mantelpiece it soon became relaxed, and in fifteen minutes began to crawl. February 11, 1857
In the winter we so value the semblance of fruit that even the dry black female catkins of the alder are an interesting sight, not to mention, on shoots rising a foot or two above these, the red or mulberry male catkins, in little parcels dangling at a less than right angle with the stems, and the short female ones at their bases. February 11, 1854
January 10, 1858 ("If you are sick and despairing, go forth in winter and see the red alder catkins dangling at the extremities of the twigs.")
February 9, 1851 (" Though the days are much longer, the cold sets in stronger than ever. The rivers and meadows are frozen. It is midwinter. ")
February 9, 1854 ("There are snow-fleas, quite active, on the half-melted snow on the middle of Walden")
February 10, 1858 ("Grows cold toward night, and windy.")
February 10, 1860 ("A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, — thermometer at 11 a. m., 14°, — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney.")
When I read of the catkins of the alder and the willow, etc., scattering their yellow pollen, they impress me as a vegetation which belongs to the earliest and most innocent dawn of nature; as if they must have preceded other trees in the order of creation, as they precede them annually in their blossoming and leafing. For how many aeons did the willow shed its yellow pollen annually before man was created! February 11, 1854
While surveying on the Hunt farm the other day, behind Simon Brown's house I heard a remarkable echo . . . this leisure, this sportiveness, this generosity in nature, sympathizing with the better part of me; somebody I could talk with, — one degree, at least, better than talking with one's self. February 11, 1853
While surveying for J. Moore to day, saw a large wood tortoise stirring in the Mill Brook. February 11, 1853
It now rains, - a drizzling rain mixed with mist, which ever and anon fills the air to the height of fifteen or twenty feet. February 11, 1852
Perhaps the best evidence of an amelioration of the climate – at least that the snows are less deep than formerly – is the snow-shoes which still lie about in so many garrets, now useless. No man ever uses them now, yet the old men used them in their youth.. February 11, 1852
February 11, 2023
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge
*****
February11, 2023
The atmosphere is very blue,
tingeing the distant pine woods.
November 15, 1857 ("The water is frozen solid in the leaves of the pitcher plants.")
November 16, 1852 (" At Holden's Spruce Swamp. The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf")
January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball”)
January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day.")
January 10, 1854 ("I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas.")
January 10, 1859 ("The alder is one of the prettiest of trees and shrubs in the winter, it is evidently so full of life, with its conspicuous pretty red catkins dangling from it on all sides.")
January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day.")
January 10, 1854 ("I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas.")
January 10, 1859 ("The alder is one of the prettiest of trees and shrubs in the winter, it is evidently so full of life, with its conspicuous pretty red catkins dangling from it on all sides.")
January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color.")
January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.")
January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue.")
January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue.")
January 20, 1857 ("The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st.”)
January 22, 1856 ("The tracks of the partridges by the sumachs, made before the 11th, are perhaps more prominent now than ever, for they have consolidated the snow under them so that as it settled it has left them alto-relievo. They look like broad chains extending straight far over the snow")
January 23, 1857 ("I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day.”)
January 26, 1856 ("Methinks it is a remarkably cold, as well as snowy, January, for we have had good sleighing ever since the 26th of December and no thaw.”)
January 22, 1856 ("The tracks of the partridges by the sumachs, made before the 11th, are perhaps more prominent now than ever, for they have consolidated the snow under them so that as it settled it has left them alto-relievo. They look like broad chains extending straight far over the snow")
January 23, 1857 ("I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day.”)
January 26, 1856 ("Methinks it is a remarkably cold, as well as snowy, January, for we have had good sleighing ever since the 26th of December and no thaw.”)
January 30, 1860 ("The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter. . . . It is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is its element.")
February 2, 1854; ("The shade of pines on the snow is in some lights quite blue.")
February 2, 1854; ("The shade of pines on the snow is in some lights quite blue.")
February 2, 1854 ( "As it is a melting day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow-fleas, even twenty rods from the woods, on the pond and meadows.")
February 4, 1856 ("Partridges feed quite extensively on the sumach berries.")
February 4, 1856 ("They come to them after every snow, making fresh tracks, and have now stripped many bushes quite bare")
February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above -6° to-day.”)
February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock.")
February 7, 1855 ("The coldest night for a long, long time. People dreaded to go to bed. The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up")
February 7, 1856 ("This the first thawing, though slight, since the 25th of December ")
February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish.")
February 7, 1856 ("This the first thawing, though slight, since the 25th of December ")
February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish.")
February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.")
February 8, 1861 (" Coldest day yet; -22 ° at least (all we can read), at 8 A. M., and, (so far) as I can learn, not above -6 ° all day. ")February 9, 1851 (" Though the days are much longer, the cold sets in stronger than ever. The rivers and meadows are frozen. It is midwinter. ")
February 9, 1854 ("There are snow-fleas, quite active, on the half-melted snow on the middle of Walden")
February 10, 1858 ("Grows cold toward night, and windy.")
February 10, 1860 ("A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, — thermometer at 11 a. m., 14°, — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney.")
February 12, 1855 ("I see at Warren’s Crossing where, last night perhaps, some partridges rested in this light, dry, deep snow. They must have been almost completely buried. They have left their traces at the bottom. They are such holes as would be made by crowding their bodies in backwards, slanting-wise, while perhaps their heads were left out.")
February 12, 1856 ("The snow or crust and cold weather began December 26th, and not till February 7th was there any considerable relenting, when it rained a little; i. e. forty three days of uninterrupted cold weather, and no serious thaw till the 11th, or yesterday.")
February 12, 1856 ("For twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!")
February 12, 1856 ("Thawed all day yesterday and rained some what last night; clearing off this morning. Heard the eaves drop all night. The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42°")
February 12, 1856 (" How different the sunlight over thawing snow from the same over dry, frozen snow! The former excites me strangely, and I experience a spring-like melting in my thoughts.")
February 12, 1857 ("The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being -6° now. Yet, being placed on the mantelpiece, it thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes")
February 12, 1860 ("I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off")
February 13, 1855 ("The tracks of partridges are more remarkable in this snow than usual, it is so light, being at the same time a foot deep. In one place, when alighting, the primary quills, five of them, have marked the snow for a foot. I see where many have dived into the snow, apparently last night, . . .They appear to have dived or burrowed into it, then passed along a foot or more underneath and squatted there, perhaps, with their heads out, and have invariably left much dung at the end of this hole. I scared one from its hole only half a rod in front of me now at 11 A.M")
February 13, 1856 (“Grew cold again last night, with high wind . . . I think a high wind commonly follows rain or a thaw in winter.”))
February 14, 1857 ("Numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°. So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat.”)
February 15, 1859 ("So measured and deliberate is Nature always.")
February 16, 1855 ("Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance.")
February 19,1856 ("The snow has been deeper since the 17th than before this winter. I think if the drifts could be fairly measured it might be found to be seventeen or eighteen inches deep on a level.”)
February 23, 1856 (“It is inspiriting to feel the increased heat of the sun reflected from the snow. There is a slight mist above the fields, through which the crowing of cocks sounds spring-like.”)
February 24, 1852 ("I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air. The cock-crowing and even the telegraph harp prophesy it, even though the ground is for the most part covered by snow.”)
March 6, 1853 (" Last Sunday I plucked some alder twigs, some aspen, and some swamp willow, and put them in water in a warm room, Immediately the alder catkins were relaxed and began to lengthen and open, and by the second day to drop their pollen; like handsome pendants they hung round the pitcher, and at the same time the smaller female flower expanded and brightened")
March 10, 1856 ("The past has been a winter of such unmitigated severity that I have not chanced to notice a snow-flea, which are so common in thawing days")
February 11, 2022
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 11
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2023
tinyurl.com/HDT11Feb
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